ZK Test Suite Released for Java Web Apps

Potix Corporation, the creator and chief commercial supporter of the open source ZK framework, this week released a new test suite for ZK Java Web applications.

The ZK Application Test Suite, or ZATS Mimic 1.0, is designed to let developers create their own application test cases without having to deploy their apps to a server and test them with a browser.

Because it frees Web app developers from the need to write an automation test to control the browser, the company claims, ZATS speeds testing and uses fewer resources. "[R]unning a test in an application server is time-consuming and can be an agile developer's darkest moment," the company says. Because the tests are browser independent, they test "pure application functionality."

ZATS Mimic can be used with a combination of technologies, including popular unit testing frameworks (the company lists JUnit and TestNG), unit-testing plugins for such IDEs as Eclipse and Netbeans, the Maven repository, the Jenkins continuous integration server and custom scripts.

ZK is an open source Ajax framework written in Java. The company calls it an "Ajax-plus-mobile framework," because of its support for Java Mobile, Android, and various mobile browsers. The core of the framework is an Ajax-based event-driven mechanism, XUL and XHTML-based components and a markup language for designing UIs. The framework complies with JSP, JSF, Portlet and Java EE technologies, and it can be integrated with existing enterprise environments and Java IDEs.

XUL (pronounced "ZUL," and sometimes written that way) is the XML User Interface markup language that was developed by the Mozilla project. It uses an open source implementation of the Mozilla Gecko layout engine, tri-licensed under the GPL, LGPL, and MPL.

ZK-based applications can be built using pure Java, markup languages and/or scripting languages. The company says it provides developers with "a true event-driven model facilitating simple and transparent development of rich internet applications using pure Java."

Potix is best known for its ZK-based Direct RIA architecture, a pure Java application engine designed to provide developers with direct access to user interface, databases and Web services. ZK itself is maintained by an active developer community, and the company claims more than 1,500,000 downloads since it was first released in 2005.